Barry Hutchinson doesn’t eat chicken feet. But as an artist and designer based in Jackson, Miss., he has a history with the distinctly Southern foodstuff.
“In the rural South many years ago, in my grandparents’ day, it was not uncommon for the women to get the chicken feet and the pig ears,” he said. “Black people ate them because that may have been all they were given. In the south it’s more of a representation of a poverty thing than anything. It was used to flavor soups in the South in hard times, when everybody ate everything.”
A way with chicken feet recently came in handy when Mr. Hutchinson designed artwork for “Filler,” a new play written by William Goulet. Riffing on a story line in the play involving chickens and a small newspaper article (the “filler” of the title), Mr. Hutchinson created an image of a giant chicken foot stepping on a wet newspaper. It’s a startling, creepy and comical head-scratcher of an image that suggests more questions about Mr. Goulet’s dark comedy than it answers.
Mr. Hutchinson recently spoke with ArtsBeat about what inspired his design. Following are excerpts from the conversation.
I’m not sure if I’ve even seen a poster for a play quite like this one. It took me a while to figure out what I was looking at. Where did this idea come from?
I’d hate to give away the play, but within the play there are some chickens and some water and some newspapers. There’s this filler article in the newspaper that has to do with these chickens. The writer felt that it was a significant part of the play. He sent me the script and I started kicking around some ideas to accentuate his view. He wanted this picture of a newspaper, so I set up my camera and got some newsprint and messed around with some ideas. Then I thought, well it would be cool if I could get a chicken and stand it on there. I live in the rural South. I can find chickens. But they don’t stand still, and they poop.
So what did you use instead?
Chicken feet. It’s not uncommon for every grocery store around here to have chicken feet, but most didn’t have it. I went to more obscure markets where I thought they’d have chicken feet. I went to an Asian market and they had a nice package of chicken feet. But they looked too dead. To liven it up I took a little yellow food coloring and put it on. The chicken foot wasn’t frozen or stiff so I put some weight on it so it looks like it’s standing. I pressed it into the newspaper with my hand and took the shot. I was holding the foot down and squeezing the trigger on the camera. My wife was dripping the water.
I don’t eat chicken feet so I’m not even sure how they come packaged.
It comes on a little foam plate just like legs and thighs do. It comes with an absorbent thing on the bottom. You can just get the feet. You can either eat them or do voodoo with them or whatever.
How many feet did you use during the shoot?
I used about three different ones. I did about six different shoots with them. I took out a couple and froze the rest of them. I went through three or four feet to get the one that I liked. They don’t always do what you want them to do. When I put weight on them the toes would go in different directions.
What did you do with the leftovers?
I fed them to the raccoons. We have quite a prolific raccoon population in my backyard. They took to it fast. They grabbed them and ran.
The name of the play is in bold. Did you create your own newsprint or did you find a newspaper that had the word in it already?
I had some blank newsprint and I printed it up. I set up the word “filler” in a classic old style newspaper font. I had to gray out the other words. I had a long lens and a pretty wide F stop so I was able to keep those out of focus.
What kind of message about the play do you think your artwork delivers? I think it’s going to make people look twice.
I was hoping that the image would be a little bit comical and a little bit dark at the same time. I think the writer was making an analogy between the chickens and the very unusual situations that ordinary people in the play are getting themselves into. Strange things happen to ordinary people. Strange things happen to chickens.
“Filler” runs Nov. 6 – 30 at 64E4’s Main Stage, 64 East 4th Street in the East Village. More information is at brownpapertickets.com.